Privacy policy

This page is an English translation for your convenience. Only the German original, Datenschutzerklärung, is legally binding.

Controller

Hosting

This application is operated on servers of STRATO AG, Berlin, Germany. When the site is accessed, STRATO processes technically necessary connection data (e.g. IP address, time of access) to operate the servers.

Account and sign-in

For an account, the name given, the email address, a password hash and – if entered – your own callsign are stored. Anyone who sets up the optional two-factor sign-in also stores the authenticator app's secret and recovery codes for it. Anyone who adds a passkey stores its public key and identifier, the name chosen for it, the date and technical details (the device's model identifier, transports, whether the passkey syncs between devices); the secret key never leaves your own device. At registration, we also store which version of the terms of use was accepted and when; this serves as proof of consent. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR (performance of the contract of use).

A session is stored for each sign-in: its start, its expiry time, the IP address and the browser identification (user agent), and for a session opened or confirmed with a passkey also which passkey that was. For a sign-in with a passkey, the server keeps a random challenge for at most five minutes. A session expires after at most 12 hours without use. To protect against mass sign-in attempts, requests to the sign-in are counted briefly per IP address. The legal basis for this is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (security of the service and protection of the accounts).

If an administrator intervenes in an account (for example to reset its password, block it or delete it), this is logged with the time and the email address of the affected account, so that such interventions can be traced later (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). These log entries are kept even after the account has been deleted.

Sending email

For confirmation and password emails we use the service provider Brevo (Sendinblue GmbH). The account's email address is transmitted to Brevo insofar as this is necessary to send the respective email.

Rig profiles and callsigns

Rig profiles (among other things the callsign, the locator and the rig's settings) are stored in the account. A callsign under which you transmit or report is permanently assigned to the account, so that no other account can publish reports under the same callsign. After a successful connection to the rig, the service also stores the time of this last connection on the profile (no port, no device identifier). Administrators with a second factor see the rig profiles of all accounts (model, CAT and PTT settings, names of the audio devices, callsign, locator, last connection) and the stored locators on a map, to help with problems and to run the service (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). The time is deleted with the profile and is part of the account's data export.

Radio data

Reception reports for FT8 and FT4 are transmitted to PSKReporter (pskreporter.info); this is an integral part of the service, among other things for the live map. A report contains your callsign and your locator as the receiving station, the name of the software and, for each station received, its callsign, locator, frequency, signal strength and time. Reception reports in WSPR mode are transmitted to WSPRnet (wsprnet.org) instead. Both services publish these reports; anyone can view them there.

For the “Who hears me?” view, our server queries PSKReporter for the reception reports of your callsign; in doing so, the callsign is transmitted to PSKReporter. The live map additionally shows publicly available data from PSKReporter, RBN, POTA and SOTA. We keep this map data for 48 hours.

Logbook data

QSO and logbook data kept by the user are stored in the account so that they are available across several sessions and devices. Import and export (ADIF, CSV) take place at the user's request.

Transfer to eQSL, QRZ and Club Log

Under Settings → Log services you can store an account with eQSL (eqsl.cc), the QRZ logbook (qrz.com) or Club Log (clublog.org). Only if you do so does our server transmit the QSOs you have selected for this (ADIF data: among other things both callsigns, date, time, band, mode, report) together with your credentials for the respective service to that service. For each transfer, its status and the service's response are stored.

The credentials for these services (user name and password or API key) are stored encrypted on our server (AES-256-GCM); they must be decryptable for the transfer and are therefore not a mere hash. If an eQSL account is stored, our server also uses it to fetch the eQSL inbox regularly, in order to show received confirmations in the logbook. If you remove the service in the settings, the credentials are deleted. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.

Upload to LoTW (ARRL)

To upload directly to Logbook of the World you load your LoTW certificate (the .p12 file from TQSL) into your browser. The certificate and its private key stay in this browser only (IndexedDB, the key not readable); the file's password is used only to open it and is neither stored nor sent to us. The browser signs the selected QSOs itself. Our server only receives that finished, signed file (among other things your certificate with your callsign, your location with locator and zones, and the QSO data), passes it on unchanged to the ARRL (lotw.arrl.org) and notes the date on the QSOs that were accepted. The file itself is not stored. "Remove certificate" deletes certificate and key from the browser. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR.

Rig control and audio

The control of the rig (Web Serial) and the audio processing take place entirely in the browser. Received audio is decoded in the browser and is not uploaded to a server. If a transmission is aborted by an error, the browser reports this to our server (error type, timing offset, mode, browser type with major version, number of CPU cores, whether the page was visible and whether it was sent without an account) – without callsign, locator, frequency or IP address. If you are signed in, we store the report with your account so that we can find and fix errors that affect you; only administrators can see this (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Reports without an account (guests) stay anonymous. All reports are kept for 90 days; those of an account are also deleted together with the account.

ISS passes in the SSTV tab

The browser computes the ISS passes from the locator of your rig profile. The server fetches the ISS orbital elements from CelesTrak (celestrak.org); nothing about you is sent with that request. Only when you click “Precise location from the browser” does the browser ask for your location. It stays in the browser, is used only for the calculation, and is neither sent to the server nor stored.

Funklehrer

The learning app Funklehrer (/funklehrer/) is available to signed-in users. The learning progress (answered questions, learning goal, study plan, achievements, settings and Morse trainer progress) is stored in your CloudHamSuite account on our server so that it is available on every device; the browser holds only a working copy (IndexedDB). It is deleted with the account. If you use the AI assistant, our server forwards your question together with the respective exam question to Google (Gemini API) and returns the answer to you. Your browser does not connect to Google itself, and Google receives neither your name nor your email address, but it does receive the text you enter – please do not enter any personal data there. The number of AI requests per account and day is limited; for this purpose, the requests are counted per account and day. Fonts are self-hosted, not embedded from Google Fonts.

Extras: games on another website

The games under “Extras” are not part of this application. They are links to pages on GitHub Pages (deralo.github.io) that open in a new tab. Only when you click such a link does your browser connect to GitHub; like any web server, GitHub receives your IP address in the process. We do not pass on any account data.

Ads (Google AdSense)

CloudHamSuite is free and may be funded by ads from Google AdSense. Whether ads are shown is decided by the operator; as long as they are not, neither a consent banner nor an ad appears and no connection to Google is made.

When ads are switched on, a banner asks for your consent (“Accept all” or “Necessary only”) on your first visit to the start page, the map, the logbook or the settings. Only after “Accept all” does the page load one ad space there, labelled “Advertisement”. The ad space is an isolated frame (iframe) loaded from a separate address (for example ads.cloudhamsuite.de); Google's code runs only in this frame. It has no access to your rig, your sign-in or the rest of the application, and we do not pass any account data, callsigns or logbook data to Google. There are no ads in the station control and the mode tabs (FT8/FT4/WSPR, JS8, SSTV, FreeDV, Winlink), and no ad is shown while transmitting.

The provider is Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland. When an ad loads, Google necessarily receives your IP address and details about your browser and device, and may use cookies or similar techniques within the frame to deliver ads, measure their performance and prevent abuse. We request non-personalised ads only: they are chosen by the page content and your approximate location, not by a profile of your behaviour. The frame starts without cookies from earlier visits, and whatever is stored in it expires when the page is closed. Data may also be transferred to the USA; Google is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, § 25(1) TDDDG). You can withdraw it at any time with effect for the future: via the “Cookie settings” link on the start page, next to the ad or under Settings. Your choice is stored only in your browser's storage (localStorage), not on our server. With “Necessary only”, no ad is loaded. More information: policies.google.com/technologies/ads and policies.google.com/privacy.

Cookies and storage in the browser

The application itself sets no tracking or advertising cookies; what happens in the ad frame is described in the section “Ads (Google AdSense)”. Only the cookies needed for signing in are set: the session cookie __Secure-chs.session_token, the cookie __Secure-chs.dont_remember, which records that the sign-in is to end when the browser is closed, with a two-factor sign-in a short-lived cookie until the code is entered, and on the sign-in page and when adding a passkey the cookie __Secure-chs.better-auth-passkey, which names the running passkey request for at most five minutes. No consent is required for this (§ 25(2) no. 2 TDDDG, German Telecommunications Digital Services Data Protection Act).

The application stores operating settings in your own browser's storage (localStorage and sessionStorage), for example the language, the answer to the consent banner, the colour scheme, waterfall settings, the map's band selection, the assignment of the serial ports and logbook drafts not yet saved. This information is not transmitted to us.

To see how many visitors reach the start page, open the sign-up, try the station without an account, create an account and connect a rig, we count anonymous daily totals only. What is stored is one number per day and step, and for start-page visits also the kind of referring site as a fixed category (for example “search engine” or “Reddit”, never the address itself). No cookies are set and nothing is stored in the browser for this, and neither the IP address nor browser details are recorded for it. For an account, we only record that its first rig has already been counted; this is deleted together with the account.

Visitor statistics without cookies

To see which pages are read and where visitors come from, every page of this website counts its views itself, without any third-party service. When a page opens, the browser sends our server the page opened, the name of the website you came from (only the host name such as “google.com”, never the full address) and a random number made only for this one page view in the page's memory. When you leave or hide the page, it follows up with how long the page was visible and whether you went on to another page of this website. From the request, the server derives in coarse form: the browser family (for example “Firefox”), the device type (computer, phone or tablet) and the region of the first browser language set (for example “AT” for “de-AT”).

Only these details are stored, with the day (UTC) – neither the IP address nor the full browser identification (user agent), no cookies, nothing in the browser's storage and no link to an account. A later visit cannot be connected to an earlier one. The random number is deleted on the day after next at the latest, the single page views after 30 days, the daily totals formed from them after 400 days. To protect against abuse, these messages are counted briefly per IP address in the server's memory; the address is not stored. So that a step between two pages of this website can be recognised, the browser passes on the previous page within the website (Referrer-Policy “same-origin”); other websites receive no referring address when you leave.

If your browser sends “Do Not Track” or “Global Privacy Control”, nothing is counted; this is how you can object to the counting at any time. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR; our legitimate interest is to improve the service according to how it is actually used and to understand how visitors find it. Since nothing is stored on your device for this and only details are used that the browser transmits with every page request anyway, we do not ask for consent for it.

Google Search Console

To see with which search terms this website appears and is clicked in Google search, our server fetches the reports of Google Search Console for cloudhamsuite.de once a day (Google Ireland Limited, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland). Google supplies only aggregated figures per day, search term, page, country and device type (clicks, impressions, click rate and average position); rare search terms are left out by Google. These figures do not relate to individual persons and are kept for about 16 months. No Google code is loaded on our pages for this, and we do not transmit any data about visitors to Google. What Google itself records during a search is described in Google's privacy policy: policies.google.com/privacy. The legal basis is Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR (legitimate interest in understanding how the service is found).

Storage period

Account data, logbook, rig profiles, stored services, transfer jobs and Funklehrer progress remain stored until you delete them or delete the account. Sessions expire after at most 12 hours without use; expired sessions and passkey challenges are deleted every hour. Map data is kept for 48 hours. Anonymous reports of aborted transmissions are deleted after 90 days; the visitor statistics keep single page views for 30 days and daily totals for 400 days, the Google Search Console figures for about 16 months. Whatever has already been transmitted to PSKReporter, WSPRnet, eQSL, QRZ, Club Log or LoTW lies with those services and is not removed by deleting the account here.

Usage log of signed-in accounts

When you are signed in, the application logs how you use it so we can find errors and improve the application: which view you open, whether connecting the rig (with its model number) and choosing the audio input and output worked or with which error code they failed, the start and result of a calibration, how many signals were decoded per minute, the start and end of a transmission with mode, band and abort reason, start and stop of full-auto, that a QSO was logged (mode and band), the count of an ADIF import, the result and count of uploads to LoTW, eQSL or Club Log, script errors of the page (message text shortened, without addresses) and, once per page load, the device class (desktop, tablet, mobile), browser type with major version, number of CPU cores and language. Not logged are the callsigns of other stations, text you type, device names, passwords or credentials, and your IP address. Each entry is stored with your account and a random identifier of the page load; only administrators can see it. Guests without an account are not logged. Entries are deleted after 90 days, and at once with the account. The legal basis is our legitimate interest in an application that works and is easy to understand (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR); you can object at any time.

Rights of data subjects

Users have the right of access, rectification, erasure, restriction of processing, data portability and objection. They also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority. Under Settings → Account you can download an export of all data stored for the account and delete the account yourself; this also removes the logbook, rig profiles, callsign assignment, service and export profiles including their credentials, passkeys and the Funklehrer progress.

Last updated: 2 November 2026